She yelled back, 'What deal, mister?' in the kind of teenage voice that adults dread: belligerent, manic, almost painful at close range. A tight Old Navy T-shirt covered in rhinestones was riding up her thin brown back, exposing a baby-blue thong.I leaned over and whispered firmly in her ear, 'We had a deal, and you aren't holding up your end of it.' Here are some excerpts from Ed Boland's The Battle For Room 314, published by Grand Central Publishing.Ĭhantay Martin sat on top of her desk, her back to me. He believes teachers alone should not be expected to solve the overwhelming issues their students face. His idealism was shattered after a year in urban public schooling and he penned this provocative memoir as 'a radical call to action' to change the system that is failing its students mired in poverty, racism and violence.
Ed Boland stepped out of a twenty-year career as a nonprofit executive to teach in a tough inner city school on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
